Home  Contemporary Issues Hallyu: Korean Pop Culture Sweeps Across Asia
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Hallyu: Korean Pop Culture Sweeps Across Asia |
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Young Professional Forum
with
Frances Gateward
Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Ji-Hong Lee
Public Relations Manager
Korean Cultural Service of New York
John Woo
Executive Director
Woo Art
Michael D. Shin
Professor of Modern Korean Literature and History
Cornell University
Wednesday, August 2, 2006
In less than a decade, South Korea has gone from being just another consumer of Hollywood entertainment to a media powerhouse in its own right, exporting music, TV dramas and action films to enthused audiences across Asia.
To understand the phenomenon-termed Hallyu (The Korean Wave)-one has to go back to the 1980s says Frances Gateward, assistant professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During the 1980s, South Korea relaxed its film-censorship laws allowing a new generation of young actors, directors and writers to draw heavily on current events and themes of urban alienation, making for more dynamic narratives. In the 1990s, increased investment improved in the industry's production values. Today, a host of Korean directors and producers who came of age during the 1980s are creating big-budget, outside-the-box entertainment. They're young: 70% of films in Korea are directed by people just out of film school, and major Korean directors are, on average, a dozen years younger than their American counterparts. According to Gateward, this gives Korean films a different sensibility than Hollywood releases-and an edge with Asian audiences.
Ji-Hong Lee, public-relations manager at the Korean Cultural Service in New York, and John Woo, a producer who's worked with AZN Television, spoke about bringing Hallyu to the United States through Korean cinema, cuisine and television drama.
Dispelling the idea that Hallyu is just another pop-culture fad, Michael D. Shin, professor of Modern Korean Literature and History at Cornell, illustrated a complex phenomenon that reveals a great deal about contemporary Asian society. Shin noted that Hallyu is overwhelmingly driven by Korean TV dramas: the export earnings of TV dramas far surpass those of Korean music and film. Shin proceeded to break these dramas down into their elements, highlighting what resonates with both Korean and non-Korean audiences.
One factor is the characters: they're frequently leaving behind dull, monotonous employment and finding their dream jobs. This suggests that amidst the economic boom of the last two decades, many in Asia are still searching for satisfying work. A second factor is the setting. Historical dramas are a staple of Korean TV, and many are set in the early sixteenth century-a period unique in Korean history for its relaxation of traditional patriarchal norms, according to Shin. Audiences across Asia may be responding to less-rigid gender relationships as they watch the shows, suggesting that Hallyu is as much a product of social change across Asia as it is a product of Korean studios.
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